Editing Solaris 10 System Administration Part I (section)

==== fragmentation ====

fragmentation is a method to allocate disk space efficiently, files less than 96 Kbytes in size are stored using fragmentation

by default, data blocks can be divided into eight fragments of 1024 bytes each. fragments store files & pieces of files smaller than 8192 bytes. for files larger than 96 Kbytes, fragments are never allocated & full blocks are exclusively used

<insert graphic showing 1024 byte fragment in a data block of 8192 bytes>

if a file contained in a fragment grows & requires more space, it is allocated to one or more additional fragments in the same data block

<insert graphic showing two 3KB files in 1 8KB data block>

ufs '''does not''' allow fragments from same file to be stored in different data blocks